Archive For The “Destinations” Category
Grand Canyon has long been high on our list of places to visit, and we finally got there on our cross-country road trip from Charleston to Seattle. Even after seeing countless pictures and reading many descriptions, Grand Canyon still appears unbelievably immense when first seen in person. We spent most of our visit on an…
Tucson, Arizona’s second-largest city, has interesting historical architecture, a number of diverse attractions, and a college-town vibe from the 46,000 students at the sprawling University of Arizona campus. Area attractions include the Pima Air and Space Museum, the “aircraft graveyard”, and the Arizona-Sonora desert museum. The Pima Air and Space Museum is one of the…
We spent three nights in Texas on the next leg of our road trip to Seattle, first in San Antonio and then in El Paso, traveling 1,097 miles (1,765 km) from New Orleans. This brought our total trip distance up to 1,897 miles (3,052 km) across seven states (South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana,…
On the second leg of our road trip to Seattle from Charleston we traveled 202 miles (325 km) from Pensacola, FL to New Orleans, LA bringing our total trip distance to 800 miles (1286 km) across sixstates (South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana). In New Orleans we stayed in a 43rd-floor room with…
In early June, we loaded Spitfire and our luggage into a rental car and set off on a 4,200-mile (6,760 km) road trip from Charleston, SC to Seattle, WA. We spent the first two nights in Florida, first in Jacksonville and then in Pensacola, after passing from South Carolina through Georgia and traveling 598 miles…
We really enjoyed our first week back in the US at Charleston City Marina after our month-long passage from Dublin via Horta. It was hard to believe that a few months earlier we were in Farsund, Norway and frozen in with ice so thick we could walk on it and now we were in Charleston,…
Photo courtesy Pierce and Janet Guyer We completed the final leg of our passage from Horta to Charleston in the same conditions as we started, with light winds, calm seas and great speed. In the middle, we had two weather systems to contend with, including the first named storm of the year, tropical storm Ana….
In determining our route from Ireland to Charleston this May, we had a number of choices. The naive option was to proceed directly from Ireland to Charleston, taking roughly the opposite route to our 2017 passage from Newport, RI to Kinsale, Ireland almost four years earlier to the day. But a near-steady procession of intense…
The most direct route from the Azores to the US is an 1,800-mile great circle route to Bermuda (the red dashed line above), then a 600-800-mile run to the US, depending on our landing choice. The problem with that routing is that the winds predominately blow from the west, on the bow, and we would…
Horta has long been a stopover for ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Explorers and settlers arrived in the 15th century, followed by trading ships in the 16th through 19th centuries, and most recently, ocean-crossing pleasure craft. To accommodate the increasing numbers of these smaller boats, a large 300-slip marina was constructed in 1986. It is…
We got our first glimpse to the Azores archipelago on the morning after our eighth night after departing Dublin. We reached the port of Horta shortly after day break and proceeded to our berth in the commercial harbour, with views to the historic town on the opposite shore. The protocol for pleasure craft arriving into…
In late April, we continued our journey home with a 1,330-mile, 8-day run from Ireland to the Azores. We departed Dublin in strong winds, but those settled within a day and we had reasonably calm conditions most of the way. We initially were planning to start the Atlantic crossing from south Ireland, but many ports…
Our second visit to Dun Laoghaire marina outside Dublin was as enjoyable as the first. In the same berth as last time, we watched many spectacular sunrises over the harbour walls. The weather was clear and calm most days, and we took several walks, including to the end of each harbour pier. We also explored…
The River Liffey runs through the center of Dublin and has long been a source of water, recreation and commerce for the city. Trade along the river was recorded as early as the Viking days and the first bridge across was built in 1428. Up until the 1990s, cargo ships transported Guinness for export from…
Dun Laoghaire harbour was constructed in the early 1800s from stone quarried at nearby Dalkey. The old railway used to transport the rock is now a popular walking path, “The Metals”, leading to the town of Dalkey and on to the quarry in Kilkenney Park. Dalkey is an appealing town with many pubs and two…
After spending two weeks at Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland, we departed on the last of the ebb tide and traveled 74 miles south to Dublin, Ireland. Conditions were beautifully clear and calm in the Irish Sea, with generally positive current, and we reached our berth at Dun Laoghaire in time to enjoy Happy Hour…
For our third and final anchorage in Strangford Lough, we returned south from Mahee Island and anchored off the Quoile River. There we stepped ashore for the first time since leaving Stornoway two weeks earlier and took a long and enjoyable walk through the village of Killyleagh, north to the town of Shrigley and back…
After three nights moored off Chapel Island, we moved to the northern end of Strangford Lough to anchor off Mahee Island. On a tender tour of the area, we passed several of the nearly dozen boating clubs inside Strangford Lough. One of them was the Down Cruising Club, who stand out from the rest for…